It’s been weeks since Selma’s last letter telling me that Dumpling’s in a coma. Worrying about Dumpling takes up all the extra space in my head, even the space I was using to wonder if Hank was really real. I want to call home and see how she is, but Sister Bernadette says international calls are strictly forbidden. I tried to write, but what would I say? And if Dumpling is in a coma, she wouldn’t be able to read it anyway.

Dumpling, the only person who even bothered to say good-bye to me. Of course, Gran couldn’t have come outside to wait for the bus the night I left Fairbanks, because what would the neighbors have thought? She had to teach me a lesson, and in some ways you had to admire how hard Gran sticks to her guns. It doesn’t hurt any less, but it does help to understand where she’s coming from.

I hadn’t expected anyone to sit with me, but Dumpling had showed up on the merry-go-round, just like she’d done on the steps of the church as we watched the river.

Dumpling had this way of being there without saying anything that was so soothing. But that night I could hear the minutes ticking by in my brain, closer and closer to the time I’d have to get on that bus.

“I’ve seen my gran give your dad letters,” I told her. I would normally have been embarrassed talking about my family like this, but I was desperate and I could hear the bus just a few streets away. The grinding gears and loud air brakes made my spine prickle; it was like hearing the future before you’re ready to be in it.

Dumpling did not flinch. She also didn’t pretend that her dad wasn’t involved with my family in some way. Did she know about my parents? Did her dad talk to her in ways that Gran never talked to me? Or did she piece it together the same way I did—by watching her dad stop by every other week under the guise of being neighborly, bringing a fillet of salmon one day, some venison jerky another.

Gran would smile at him and exclaim over his generosity. Then she’d slide him a crisp white envelope with cramped handwriting, the address too small to read from a distance. He would tuck it into his Carhartt vest pocket and tip his hat to Gran respectfully. After a while I guessed it might be for Mama, because who else did Gran know? The look on Dumpling’s face told me I’d probably guessed right.

“Do you think your dad might be okay with delivering a note from me, too?” I asked.

“I can ask him,” she’d said with a shrug. But I could tell by the way she looked at me that she knew it was no small favor.

“Ruth, your mom isn’t well. I don’t think she would have left you and Lily if she could have helped it.”

“Did your dad say that?”

She just nodded, but her eyes wouldn’t meet mine. Nobody admits to talking about other people behind their backs; it’s just not done.

When the bus arrived, I gave her the blue note and climbed on board. “Bye, Ruth.” Her voice was so soft. It floated up the steps behind me like a tiny bird.

At a truck stop somewhere near the Canadian border, I turned seventeen all by myself. I used my emergency money that Gran gave me knotted up in the corner of a handkerchief to buy a Hostess apple pie as a birthday cake. The baby seemed to like it, or at any rate it woke up and played me like a bongo from the inside for the next few hours. I guess I wasn’t truly alone on my birthday after all.

—

Now my thoughts about Dumpling squish right up against my anxiety about the impending birth. I’m tired of thinking only of myself, but I’m tired of worrying about Dumpling, too.

To keep myself busy, I ask if I can help out more in the kitchen. Sister Agnes still scares the pants off me, but I’ve learned that her bark is worse than her bite. Today she tells me that the abbess is having a private meeting and we should make scones and use the nice cups for tea.

I head out to pick blackberries for the scones—the bushes are loaded down and I pick my way through the woods overlooking the river. I sometimes feel like I imagined Hank being here in these woods, except that when I braid my hair the red ribbon isn’t tied to the bottom of it anymore.

I’m deep inside my own head when a lime-green Gremlin drives up and parks in front of the abbey, alerting me to the fact that I’ve been daydreaming again. These must be the abbess’s guests, and Sister Agnes is probably champing at the bit for the blackberries.

As I come through the woods, a man and a woman are getting out of the car. He is tall and wearing a plaid shirt like a lumberjack. She has fiery red hair and is wearing a springy dress with a peach cardigan that clashes a tiny bit with her hair. They look nice. She’s carrying a bouquet of bluebells in a glass bottle. I think of Hank again, and I can’t help but smile to myself. More proof that he was really here. (I couldn’t have made up that part if I tried.)

There has been a stream of visitors like these over the past few weeks, although it seems that Sister Agnes finds a lot of things for me to do every time guests arrive. Keeping me and my belly hidden is proving more and more difficult every day.

I slip through the back door of the kitchen, where Sister Agnes is waiting. “What did you have to do? Grow them yourself?” she barks.

Sister Bernadette is preparing a tray with a white hand towel and three bone-china cups and saucers dotted with crimson flowers; she winks at me behind Sister Agnes’s back.

“Shall I carry the tray in?” I ask, wiping the smile right off her face.

“Oh no, dear. I can do it,” she says.

“I need you to go hang these towels on the line anyway,” says Sister Agnes.

“But yesterday you said we were going to start hanging things inside, in the drying room.”

“Well, that was yesterday,” she snaps. I look out at the threatening clouds and decide to keep my mouth shut. She piles the hand towels in a basket and Sister Bernadette heads down the hall leading to Mother Superior’s study.

I’ve only been in there once—the day I arrived. The room is very dark and smells like leather and wood oil and old books. The abbess is very old, too, but also very kind; her round face is papery and her skin is practically translucent, as if she’s never seen the sun. She wears a heavy cross around her neck, which must be the reason she’s slightly hunched over. I think she’s been wearing it for almost a hundred years. She welcomed me and said she hoped I would be happy here, and that was the last time we spoke.

“Get a move on,” Sister Agnes says, nudging me out the door.

Sure enough, a light downpour turns torrential as I hang up the last towel, and I put the basket over my head and waddle over to stand under the eaves on the side of the abbey. I lean against the wall to wait for a lull, happy to take a bit more time away from Sister Agnes.

I sit on the dry ground next to the abbey wall. To my left is a row of windows. I hear voices and realize that these windows are right off the abbess’s study. There’s a soft, distant sound of spoons clinking against teacups. I imagine the abbess putting in her standard three cubes of sugar, the way Sister Bernadette told me she does.

“So, it seems that all your paperwork is in order,” she says. “The final step is to tell us a little more about yourselves so we can be sure you’re the right fit.”

Someone sets a cup down heavily, then murmurs an apology—a man’s deep voice. I am trying to remember his face, but all I see is that plaid shirt and possibly a beard. I wish I’d paid better attention.

“I work at the mill in town,” he says. “It’s good, steady pay and I’ll probably get moved to foreman within a couple years.”

He has a simple way of talking, but you can hear the kindness in his voice. He seems reluctant, or maybe unpracticed, talking about himself.

His wife jumps in to finish his sentences. “He got employee of the year last year; he’s a good worker, super dependable. He’s going to go far.”

The abbess can tell they’re nervous, and she doesn’t seem to be the kind of person to make others suffer. “I hope I’m not putting you on the spot,” she says. “It’s just important to us that this baby have a good home. The mother is not some stranger, she’s a member of our own family.”

It’s the last part of this sentence that hits me. She’s a member of our own family?

“The doctors have said we can never have kids,” the woman says. “We just want a family. We would do everything possible to make sure the baby had a good life.”

“If it’s a boy I can teach him to hunt—” the man begins, but his wife cuts him off. “We’d love it if it’s a girl, as well. Of course, if she wanted to hunt, too…” She trails off, and I imagine them looking at each other wondering if hunting was the wrong topic. I doubt the abbess knows what to think, but it makes me smile.

“We just really want a family,” the woman says again, a bit defeated, like she’s throwing out one last plea into the wind, hoping Mother Superior will catch it.

“Well, there’s still a few months before the birth, so we’ll get back to you and let you know about your application. I’m sure the Lord knows what’s best for everyone,” says the abbess.

They shake hands and I hear the abbess say a prayer, asking for God’s will and for them to trust in him, and then they leave her office. I stare out at the towels and the rain, wondering if I should go finish up before anyone sees me, but it doesn’t seem as important anymore.

I forget sometimes that this pregnancy won’t last forever. It will be strange not to feel the baby moving, kicking, swimming around inside me—as much as I didn’t want it, it’s hard to remember what I was like before. When it’s over, I’ll have to get used to not knowing anything about my baby.

It’s obvious now why all these couples keep visiting, but why can’t they just tell me? It feels exactly like Gran ignoring me for months and then one day putting me on a bus.

Sister Josephine has entered the study. She and the abbess are talking so quietly, I have to lean closer to the window to hear.

“I don’t know, they seem a bit young,” Mother Superior says.

“Well, they are married, and certainly older than Ruth,” says Sister Josephine.

“I just wonder…he did seem keen on hunting. What if it is a girl?”

“I’m not sure that’s grounds for being a bad parent,” says Sister Josephine. “Things are changing, Mother; I think girls can hunt. No disrespect, but you’re from a few generations back.”

The abbess laughs quietly. “You know, Sister Josephine, maybe I’m not the one who should be making this decision. What experience do I have besides Marguerite, and now Ruth? She wanted me to give Ruth those flowers, but did you notice she had them in a whiskey bottle? Heavens, if that’s something this generation thinks is appropriate, then I am truly outdated.”

At these words I jump to my feet, or try to. I struggle and pull myself up along the wall. Then, as fast as my body will let me move, I run out to the parking area, just in time to see the lime-green car backing out.

“Stop!”

The man slams on the brakes, looking in his rearview mirror at me standing right behind his car. I am soaking wet, my dress clinging to my round belly, my hair sopping. I must look terrifying.

But the man opens the door and walks around the car. “Are you all right?” he asks me in the kindest voice ever. It reminds me of George back in the Salvation Army, except that this man has steel-blue eyes and a ginger beard. The woman is out of the car now, too, still holding the glass bottle full of bluebells. I stare at the whiskey bottle and feel like I am five years old again; the smell of my parents’ house wraps around me as if someone has put a blanket over my wet, wet shoulders. Her hair looks so much like my mother’s, after my father twirled his bloody fingers in it and they danced in the kitchen.

“What’s your favorite kind of venison?” I hear myself say to the man, who is looking at me the way I’m sure he looks at a deer in the forest. Hesitantly, no sudden movements, so it doesn’t bolt and run away. If he thinks the question is odd, he doesn’t show it.

“I like the shoulder cut,” he says. “But it has to cook all day or it’s too tough.”

I must look disappointed, because the woman touches his arm lightly and says, “I like backstrap. Everyone knows backstrap is the best cut.”

She smiles—a genuine smile.

“Are those flowers really for me?” I ask her.

“They are,” she says. Her eyes take in my round stomach, bobbing like a buoy under my wet dress.

She hands me the bottle and it feels heavier than it looks, as if it holds every wildflower bouquet I have missed since my mother left.

I remember Dumpling’s voice saying, “Sometimes you just have to hold on to whatever you can,” and me saying to Hank, “You mean, like something to look forward to?”

“Would you really love my baby?” I ask her.

“With all my heart,” she says. “And you, for trusting me.”

I stare at the wildflowers spilling out of the whiskey bottle vase, and I know that these are the people that should raise my baby.

I reach inside my pocket for the other half of the red ribbon. I’ve cut it just like Dumpling told me to.

“Will you give this to my baby?” I hold it out to the woman, who takes it gingerly, like it’s the most fragile, beautiful thing she’s ever held.

I don’t know how long the nuns have been standing outside watching us, their habits getting drenched in the rain. The abbess comes over then and really does place a blanket over my shoulders.

“You don’t have to make any decisions,” she tells me.

“No,” I say, “I do. It’s my life. It’s my baby. And I want to know that both of us have something good to look forward to.”

Right then Sister Agnes surprises us by bursting into tears and fleeing back into the kitchen. Sister Josephine and Sister Bernadette look at me and shake their heads, but they, too, wipe their eyes with the corner of their wet habits. I stare at these women, who used to scare me in their long black robes, flitting around the abbey like bats.

There’s Sister Bernadette, who smells of pistachios and always leaves a cup of tea by my bed; Sister Josephine, with her lead foot and the way she’s helped me understand Gran; even Sister Agnes, off in the kitchen now, because she has to be gruff or she wouldn’t know what to do with herself. I remember the abbess saying “She’s a member of our own family,” and I remember Selma’s letter—how I rolled my eyes at her words even as she knew I would. But once again, Selma was right. We don’t have to be blood to be family.